Linux on the Desktop

I recently left IBM having been an education consultant for 7 years. During this time, I decided t make the full commitment to using Linux as a desktop. The Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 release has gotten generally good reviews for its ease of use, so I decided to give it a try.

My HW setup is a standard IBM Thinkpad T40 laptop that was a used purchase. It has the following specs:

• 80 GB HD (Western Digital)
• 1 GB RAM
• Intel Wireless Ethernet Adapter
• Broadcom Ethernet Adapter
• all of the other standard stuff like modem, USB, etc.

I downloaded Feisty Fawn and created a bootable disk using CD Burner XP, a free and really nice CD burning SW application. If you use this application, please donate some money to keep their effort going. This is a great example of the reasons why free SW works.

Onto the installation. I inserted the disk into my CD/DVD drive, connected an Ethernet cable and booted my laptop. I was offered some choices and after choosing the installation option, everything started as promised. Approximately 20-30 minutes later, I had a running installation of Ubuntu with the basic set of tools that I needed to accomplish my daily activities.

Nearly 30 days later, my laptop has never crashed and I have gotten the hang of getting apps or plug-ins using the command line options. All in all, I am quite pleased and am still only using this Linux based laptop for my everyday needs.